Tony Danza may have been behind the end of Who’s The Boss?, his former co-star revealed.
Speaking with ReMind magazine in an interview published in March 2026, former cast member Danny Pintauro looked back on the series, which aired from 1984 to 1992 on ABC, and noted that Danza played a key role in how it ultimately ended.
“I have very specific memories of that last moment for sure,” Pintauro, 50, shared about the show’s final episode. “We could have gone for another season, but I guess Tony was adamant about going out on a high note rather than doing that last season that nobody watches, and then you’re like, oh we should have just called it a day. So, I think that’s really why they did that.”
Pintauro noted that as he grew out of his role as cute, young child, Jonathan Bower, producers pulled a typical stunt. “They even brought in the little kid [Billy, played by Jonathan Halyalkar] in the last season because that’s what you did at the time. To boost ratings by bringing in some child,” he said. “I always thought they should have given me bigger parts. But no, they had to bring in a little kid.”
On Who’s the Boss?, Danza starred as a widowed father, Tony Micelli, who takes a job as a housekeeper for a wealthy businesswoman, Angela Bower (Judith Light). Pintauro, Alyssa Milano, and the late Katherine Helmond also appeared on the long-running sitcom.
After eight seasons of “will they or won’t they” tension, the final scene of the series strongly hinted that Tony and Angela would have a romantic future together.
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Tony Danza wanted the series to end the way it did
In an interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Danza explained the Who’s the Boss? series finale.
“We never got together, that’s the thing that was great about it,” the actor said of the Tony and Angela characters. “There were people who wanted to marry us at the end. It was a great script, it was actually written, but I was of the mind that it was never about that. It was about two people who weren’t together, not people who were together. And I wanted it to end that way.”
“If you look at that, we tried to duplicate the first scene in the last scene,” he added. “The only difference is I’m wearing a tux.”
Danza noted that while Tony “absolutely loved” Angela, he felt she was “above his status.” “He was enchanted by her intelligence and about her ability to make her way in the world and deal with her mother [Mona, played by Helmond], and you know all the things she did,” he explained. “I think he had a hard time seeing himself with her.”
In an interview with CBS News, Light agreed that it was better to end the series without wedding bells for Tony and Angela. “It was time to go,” Light said. “And the way they wrote the ending was so beautiful, the way they book-ended it from the beginning. It was really lovely.”
A scrapped revival
Fans have been hoping for a Who’s The Boss? revival for decades. Following the death of Helmond in 2019, Danza shut the idea down. “First of all, I’ve never been a big fan of these reboots,” he said on Good Day New York later that year, per People magazine. “[But] no, can’t reboot [Who’s the Boss?] because we’ve got no Katherine Helmond, that’s why not. That’s it.”
But one year later, a proposed Who’s the Boss? spinoff was announced, with Deadline reporting that Danza and Milano were both on board reprise their roles as father and daughter, Tony and Samantha Micelli. In 2024, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that plans for the sequel had been scrapped, with no reason given.
In February 2026, Danza told the New York Post that he really thought the revival series would happen. “We had a shot at it. I thought it might happen,” the actor shared. “We had a real good script. I think it would have been funny.”
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